Research

=**Researching the Westhaven EHSAS Project**=

**Liz Probert, The University of Auckland, Faculty of Education**

This research is partly motivated, for the researcher, by recent government and Ministry of Education statements and by the Westhaven Cluster aims – to empower students to be independent learners by placing the learner at the centre of the educational process and to focus on developing a school-wide information literacy process and extending creative and critical thinking skills.

The development of a knowledge society and economy in New Zealand is a goal often stated by the government, including the Ministry of Education (Ministry of Education, 2005, 2006). Much of the literature concerning knowledge societies and economies emphasises the need to develop life long learners and the important role of education in achieving this aim. Students need to be independent, lifelong learners, placed at the centre of the educational process. The literature concerning lifelong learning emphasises the pivotal role to be played by information literacy in such development. An information literate person is able to locate, evaluate, use and disseminate information, using a wide variety of resources including print, ICT, people and visual images. This involves the development of many skills, including the use of an information processing model and the development of creative and critical thinking skills. Members of a knowledge society, as (Hargreaves, 2003) states, "process information and knowledge in ways that maximise learning, stimulate ingenuity and invention and develop capacity to initiate and cope with change" (p. 3). Only those students with well developed information literacy skills will be equipped to participate in these ways. Hipkins (Hipkins, Conner, & Neill, 2006), interviewing secondary students about their research procedures which appeared to consist mainly of the "retrieval and repackaging of information", emphasised the need for students to develop the skills to allow them to find, evaluate and process information.

Draft questionnaires submitted by Researcher, Liz Probert. Links to web bases draft questionnaires: [|Teachers' questionnaire][| Students' questionnaire]
 * [[file:Draft StudentQuestionnaire.doc]] || [[file:DraftQuestionnaireStaff.doc]] ||
 * || [[file:Revised DrafQueStaffSept6.doc]] ||